I'm a privacy pragmatist, writing about the intersection of law, technology, social media and our personal information. If you have story ideas or tips, e-mail me at khill@forbes.com. PGP key here.
These days, I'm a senior online editor at Forbes. I was previously an editor at Above the Law, a legal blog, relying on the legal knowledge gained from two years working for corporate law firm Covington & Burling -- a Cliff's Notes version of law school.
In the past, I've been found slaving away as an intern in midtown Manhattan at The Week Magazine, in Hong Kong at the International Herald Tribune, and in D.C. at the Washington Examiner. I also spent a few years traveling the world managing educational programs for international journalists for the National Press Foundation.
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Supreme Court Judges Hurricane Sandy Not To Be A Big Deal

While most D.C. residents are enjoying a hurricane holiday, the Supreme Court is soldiering on. Public transit has been shut down in the nation’s capital; schools are closed; and non-emergency government workers have been advised to stay home for the day. But the Court, which has historically had a higher tolerance for inclement weather than other federal offices, is convening Monday to hear arguments in two cases which have received much attention in the worlds of technology, retail and privacy.

In the first case, Clapper vs. Amnesty International, the Supreme Court is being asked to determine whether those who suspect they’ve been spied on by the government without a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act can challenge that surveillance. The government’s argument is, in the words of The New York Times, “a particularly cynical Catch-22: Because the wiretaps are secret and no one can say for certain that their calls have been or will be monitored, no one has standing to bring suit over the surveillance.” The Justices are not making a call as to whether the warrantless electronic eavesdropping is constitutional or not but whether any one has legal standing to challenge it given that they don’t know for sure whether it happened to them. Only Franz Kafka could do a write-up of this suit justice, but the SCOTUSblog has a nice backgrounder.

The second case is “the highest-stakes intellectual property case of the year,” according to Ars Technica, and concerns your right to “resell just about anything.” A book publisher successfully sued Supap Kirtsaeng, a Thai-born student-entrepreneur who realized he could buy their textbooks on the cheap abroad and then resell them in the U.S. at a profit. Kirtsaeng appealed his loss to the Supreme Court, which now will rule on the doctrine of “first sale,” which gives us the right to sell, lend out, or give away a copyrighted good once we’ve bought it.

Kirtsaeng’s cause has drawn a wide array of allies to his side. These include the biggest online marketplaces like eBay, brick-and-mortar music and game retailers, and Goodwill—all concerned they may lose their right to freely sell used goods. Even libraries are concerned their right to lend out books bought abroad could be inhibited.

John Wiley and Sons, the textbook publisher suing Kirtsaeng, has its share of backers as well, including the movie and music industries, software companies, and other book publishers. Those companies argue differential pricing schemes are vital to their success, and should be enforced by US courts. Nearly 30 amicus briefs have been filed in all.

The ruling on this one could do far more damage to resalers’ business models that Hurricane Sandy will do to the Eastern coastline.

With cases of this import on the docket, it’s clear why SCOTUS couldn’t let Hurricane Day O’Connor stand in its way. UPDATE: Though it will bow in the face of Sandy tomorrow; the Court won’t convene on Tuesday, and will hear those arguments on Thursday instead. There’s more good stuff to come this week for privacy wonks. On Wednesday, the court will hear two cases involving the legality of drug-sniffing dogs.

The Court has previously determined that it’s unconstitutional to use a thermal-imaging device to search people’s homes from the street (without a warrant) to see if they are, for example, harvesting plants of an illegal variety inside. Florida v. Jardines, one of the cases on Wednesday, asks if it’s a violation of our Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures for police to walk a dog with the smelling powers of a superhero to your front door to do the same thing. In other words, do police need a warrant to let a dog sniff outside your home? While kids are streaming to your door this Halloween, the Justices will be thinking that over.

In other news, here’s the weather report from D.C.: It’s sprinkling outside; leaves are fluttering on the trees a bit; and there’s a chance of horseman sightings. At the moment, it looks like Chief Justice John Robert’s judgement as to the storm was the right one. Let’s hope the Court makes similarly good decisions in this week’s cases.

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Hey Kashmir, hope the week is off to a good start for you. Just wondering more specifically about the Clapper vs. Amnesty International case, you talked about briefly.

With the future, involving more wiretapping, and facial recognition software upcoming more and more often. What “anti” measures are being made in your opinion? Will there eventually become a day, where an individual can go to a dex.com sort of site, and type in there number, and see if it is being surveilled, or looked at all? Or if a person uploads a picture of themselves, and see what has all been documented of that image?

I imagine that as the future is coming, there’ll be other companies that get involved with the surveillance, instead of just the government. Also in the future, instead of 4square, people checking in where they are at, instead they just take a picture of where they are at, then using tools like google maps, and facial/background recognition software, being able to pinpoint that an individual is person ABCD13579, who has uploaded 28 other pictures through this “Program X”, and we can see that they are at the location of (insert location.) Do you think that is how the future is going to be eventually, going down the line of facial recognition and surveillance?

Can you imagine the firestorm that would occur if voters couldn’t get to the polls in Virginia, and that the losing candidate lost Virginia, and that cost him the election? No matter which side that happened to, it’d be a crisis, and the only fair thing to do would be to have an extra voting day in Virginia (this scenario seems more likely to happen to Obama then Romney, as Obama can win without Virginia, but Romney pretty much can’t).